


Knights of the Round Table

by panharmonium



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17650946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panharmonium/pseuds/panharmonium
Summary: “You’re lucky I like them, you know.”“You’re lucky they like you,” Arthur corrects him.  Then, in an undertone, “for whatever reason.”





	Knights of the Round Table

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a latecomer to the Merlin party - like, ten years late - and I haven't watched Season 5 yet, so if you are one of those lovely folk who are inclined to leave comments (bless you and may you have good luck always), I would super appreciate your avoidance of any S5 spoilery-type material! Thank you for helping me enjoy my very belated experience with this show! :)

i.

Percival’s frame is stacked like the inner wall of the citadel, twenty-foot deep and solid stone from back to front, but he accepts his platter from Merlin with careful hands, tucking the chipped bowl onto his lap as steam rises from his food, ghosting the front of his mail with mist.

“It’s a half day’s ride from here,” Arthur says, his own soup left to cool between his boots, forgotten in the grass.  “We’ll turn north in the morning, travel as far as the White Mountain.”

“And no further,” Percival adds.

Arthur nods agreement.  “No, not today.  I doubt right now that even a native like yourself could safely cross the border into Cenred’s kingdom.”

“Lot's kingdom, now,” Leon remarks.  "And so much the harder to enter it."

Percival shakes his head.  “Lot is a vulture feasting on carrion.  Cenred bled his own lands dry and left Lot’s kind to scrabble over the bones - my country has had no king worth speaking of since Cenred’s ascension.  Every child in the Fourth Kingdom can sing you a lay cursing his name.”

“Really?”  Gwaine’s mouth twists into a smile.  “Let’s have one, then.”

Percival wags a warning finger at him, but swallows a mouthful of soup and clears his throat nonetheless.

 _Jolly king Cenred, the unread and unwed,_  
_His rivers have run red; his people have all fled!_

_He’ll charge you your head for a morsel o’bread -_

“ - to hell with physicians, we’re better off dead,” Merlin finishes, bending to refill Elyan’s cup.

Percival twists around to look at him.  “Merlin!  You are full of surprises!”

Arthur chuckles and raps Merlin on the shin as he passes by with the water jug.  “Yes, didn’t you know, Sir Percival?  Merlin is as much a product of Jolly King Cenred as you.”

Gwaine stretches out, long and lanky against a fallen tree.  “He’s on a very long holiday.”

“Yes, and he’s rather overstayed his welcome,” Arthur agrees.  “Three years, Merlin.  Doesn’t your mother want for your company?”

Merlin keeps his eyes lowered to Leon’s cup, which he fills with all the appearances of deference.  “My mother knows you’d be forever walking about without your trousers if you didn’t have me to dress you every morning.”

A chorus of snickers and whistles ripples around the group.  Percival slaps the empty space next to him on the log and gestures for Merlin to join him, nearly spilling some of the soup in his lap as good-natured ribbing and renewed conversations spring up around the fire. 

“Where is home then, Merlin?” Percival asks, setting his bowl aside.

Merlin glances around to check that the rest of the party’s cups are full, then settles next to him, nestling the nearly empty water jug atop his knees.  “Ealdor?  It’s a small village, deep in the valley of the White Mountain.”

“I don’t know it,” Percival says.  He sounds sorry to say so.

Merlin inclines his head to him.  “Understandable, sir.  Our kingdom is vast.”

“Vast, but very beautiful.”

Merlin looks at him, a little puzzled.  “Well, it’s not much," he says.  "A few fields, and some flowers.  A little wood.  A littler creek.”  He stares at a log sparking in the fire, the corners of his mouth turning up.  “A couple of cows.”

Percival grasps his wrist earnestly.  “Can there be anything more beautiful than this?”

Merlin holds his gaze for a moment, and then a slow, wistful smile spreads over his face.  “No.  Not really.”

Percival releases his hold, pats Merlin on the wrist firmly.  “Our kingdom _is_ beautiful,” he affirms.  “I hope I shall have the chance to see it again, before my time is done.”  He takes a deep swig from his cup.  “Now, our late king, on the other hand - ”

“He’s had many songs written about him,” Merlin says diplomatically.

Percival grins and clinks his battered cup against the jug on Merlin’s knees.  “Long may he rot.”

 

ii.

“We ought to let you have a go next time, Merlin.”  Elyan swings his sword in lazy circles at his side as they trudge back to the armory, boots clapping against frozen flagstones, a trail of icy mud marking their progress down the corridor.

“Oh, I don’t think so.  I’m no good with a lance.”

Percival grasps Merlin’s upper arm, encircling the entire thing between his thumb and middle finger.  “How could you be, with arms like this?”  He gives Merlin a little shake, steam rising from his own bare arms as if he’d just climbed out of a hot bath.  “No, no.  Merlin’s just a little thing.  He was born for a light, fast blade.”

Merlin laughs, breath visible in the winter air.  He shifts the pile of shields in his arms to a less precarious position.  “Afraid I’m not very handy with a sword, either.”

Percival furrows his brow.  “Crossbow?”

“My aim is horrible.”

“Sling?”

“Haven't I just said my aim is horrible?”

Gwaine gives him a light poke between the shoulders with his sheathed blade.  "What are you good at then, Merlin?" 

Elyan swings around on his heels, directing an uncharacteristically sly grin at the rest of them.  "He’s not half-bad at kissing, if my sister is to be believed.”

Merlin blanches whiter than the snow clinging to their boots.  Gwaine’s uproarious laughter fills the corridor as Merlin shoves his way to the front of the group, nearly fumbling the stack of shields in his arms to the floor.  "Elyan, for gods' sake, do not repeat that to - anyone!  In front of anyone.  To anyone, for any reason."  The natural color rushes back into his face, along with a little something extra.  "What on earth would she tell you a thing like that for?"

"I'm her brother, Merlin," Elyan says, shrugging off his mail with a grin.  "There are no secrets between us.  If you had any brothers yourself, you'd know."

Merlin snatches up Elyan’s mail from the table with a scowl.  "If my theoretical brother told such tales on me as you do, I'd ship him off to the Perilous Lands straight away."

"Good thing Gwen's a better sister than you would be a brother, then."

Merlin shakes his head and begins to gather up their discarded pieces of armor as the knights undress.  Gwaine claps him on the back, as if he is owed some sort of congratulations.  “Perhaps it wasn’t Arthur she turned me down for after all, eh?”

Merlin doesn’t dignify this with a reply, but his ears redden beyond what the cold had done for them outside.  Once stripped of their weapons and armor, the knights depart in ones and twos, chuckling and chatting with one another.  Only when Merlin thinks he hears the last of their footsteps fade does he turn from rolling a wad of mail in the sand barrel, hands still covering in grit.

"Merlin."

Elyan, mostly divested of outerwear but still somehow every bit as much a knight as when he is adorned with gleaming mail and the Pendragon crest.  Merlin accepts the helmet Elyan holds out to him, its outer surface still cold.

"For what it’s worth,” Elyan says in his gentle voice, “I'd have been perfectly happy to have had you as a brother."  His sincerity is a warm contrast to the chilled helm in Merlin's hands.  "Any man who can make my sister laugh as you do is more than worthy of the title.”

Merlin smiles.  “She’d never have me.  Have you seen what I look like, waving a sword around?  No blacksmith’s daughter would ever subject herself to such embarrassment.”

“Well, maybe not,” Elyan says, clapping Merlin on the arm.  “All the same - I’ll think of you as a brother anyhow, if you’ll allow it.  You’ve saved my life enough times, and Gwen’s.  It would be an honor.”

Merlin nods, pleased.  “The honor is mine, Elyan.”  A bemused grin tugs at his lips.  “And as there are to be no secrets between siblings, I feel you ought to know - I’m not sure what it is you’ve heard, exactly, but the truth of the matter is that _she_ kissed _me_.”

Elyan snorts like he's inhaled a gnat.  “All right then, Merlin.” 

“She _did!”_

Elyan waves and disappears round the corner, his peals of laughter echoing in the armory’s frozen stacks.

 

iii.

Gwen had tried to explain Leon to him once, long ago, back when Leon was simultaneously the longest-standing and - to Merlin, at least - the least-understood of Arthur's knights.

“Is he unsociable?” Merlin had asked, laying out one of Arthur’s shirts on the drying green.

“Of course not!” Gwen had protested, hefting a basket of her own mistress' laundry in her arms.

Merlin had frowned, flapping out a wet sheet.  “Only he doesn’t say very much.”

Gwen had shook her head at him like he was being silly.  “He hasn’t got anything to say, that’s all.”

“I feel as if I hardly know him.”

Gwen had given a little shrug, turning her attention to Morgana’s clothes.  “Well, you don’t, really, do you?”

Merlin, curiosity piqued, had raised an eyebrow at her.  “And do you?”  

“Well, I mean to say - er.  No.  Yes.  Well, sort of.  He just keeps himself to himself, Merlin; there’s nothing wrong with that.”

And of course there hadn’t been.  Leon, Merlin was soon to learn, is well-respected and well-liked, not only by his peers but by the palace staff, whose opinion Merlin holds in rather higher esteem, and whose primary recommendations of Leon’s character are that he always has a ‘please and thank ye’ at the ready, excuses himself when passing servants in the corridors, and has never once been heard to raise his voice.

But for all his gentle manners, Sir Leon is still a force to be reckoned with in the lists. 

Arthur, shoved onto a stool with one arm dangling uselessly at his side, wriggles away from Gaius’ hands and points an accusing finger at his most senior knight.  “I’m not going to tell you again, Leon!”

Gaius doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but his eyelids do flutter tellingly as he attempts to settle Arthur back into his seat.  “If you please, Sire - ”

Arthur stabs his pointed finger at Leon as if aiming for a chink in his armor.  “You pulled back!"

"I what?"

"You flinched!”

“Flinched?”  Leon boggles at him.  “My lord, your arm is _dislocated_!”

Arthur nearly spits in disdain.  “Dislocated!  It ought to be broken in half!”

Gaius pushes Arthur down firmly, one hand on his good shoulder and one on top of his head.  “Your majesty, if you please - ”

Arthur rocks forward, stool popping up onto two legs.  “What’s the excuse today, Leon?  Sun got in your eyes?  Hands gone mysteriously numb?  Back spasm?”

“My lord - !”

“You can ‘my lord’ me until all the cows in Camelot come home; I still won’t believe a word out of your lying mouth!  If you _ever_ tilt a mercy pass at me again - ”

Merlin slips out of the tent, leaving them to Gaius’ more capable management.  A few moments later, he’s joined by a harried-looking Leon, who snaps the tent flap closed behind him with an air of decided relief.  Merlin sets down a basin of sun-warmed water atop an upturned barrel, accepting Leon’s characteristic ‘thank you’ with a nod.

“Don’t mind my lord Arthur,” Merlin says.  He hands Leon a cloth.  “He’s pleased, really.”

“Is he?” Leon says, wiping his face.  “I must have imagined all the angry shouting.”

“He’s only angry you didn’t take his arm clean off.”

Leon squeezes the cloth out over his head, drenching his sweat-plastered hair.  “Sometimes I think he’d be angry even if I took his head clean off.”

“Well…” Merlin says delicately.  He accepts the wrung-out washcloth with a bow.  “Sometimes, some of us wish you would.”

Leon is too much a knight’s knight to express any sort of agreement, but the two of them exchange long-suffering smiles.

 

iv.

Merlin skids around the corner and bursts through the first open door he sees, flattening himself against a plastered wall.  Gwaine follows a second behind, panting and shoving Merlin further into the shadows of the goat house.  “Budge up, there.”

Merlin pushes him, leading to a silent jostle which is only interrupted by the metallic jangle of jogging soldiers’ feet tramping up the road.  Merlin slaps Gwaine’s hands away and presses one eye to the doorjamb, peering out into the yard to follow their pursuit's progress.  “They’ve gone down by the cordwainer’s,” he says, rolling away from the door and leaning against the wall, breathing heavily.  He glares at Gwaine.  “Knights of Camelot are not meant to be running away from their own men-at-arms four whole bells after curfew!"

Gwaine, just as out of breath as Merlin, shrugs easily, wide grin glinting white in a slab of moonlight.  “Couldn’t be helped.”

“Couldn’t it?”

“The tavern doesn’t serve Dragon’s Breath to the before-curfew crowd, you know.  They call it The Rising Sun for a reason.”

Gwaine’s own breath is dragon-like enough, a potent mix of pepper and honey.  Merlin snorts under his breath, wrinkling his nose and turning his head away to peer through the doorjamb again.  “I think they’ve gone.”

Gwaine sighs in a satisfied way, fetched up against the wall of the goat house as if he can’t imagine anywhere better to be, hair in his face and a waggish spark to his eyes that even six tankards of mead couldn't douse.  Merlin grins in spite of the flea-bitten goats milling about his legs.  “Couldn’t have saved me a sip, could you?” he asks, indicating the cup in Gwaine's hand.

“If I'd thought you could drink it without going tail over top down a well, I would have done.”

“Brave words from a man stood up to his ankles in goat dung.”

Gwaine bares his teeth in a grin, no more injured by the retort than he is by the ingloriousness of their surroundings.  “A small price to pay for all that the Rising Sun has to offer in the wee hours of the morning.”  He waggles his dirty shoe in a sliver of moonlight.  “See?  Nothing a bath can’t fix.”

“If we make it back up to the castle alive, I’ll draw you one.”

“Not on your life,” Gwaine counters.  “Unlike some certain unnamed folk we know, I can draw my own bath.”  He rolls his shoulders a few times and bounces experimentally at the knees, limbering up for a run.  “Come to think of it, I’ll draw _you_ one - really get these nobles’ knickers in a knot.”

“You’re a noble.”

“Only to you," Gwaine says.  "Unless the court historian’s dug up my seal of nobility somewhere, not that I think he would, seeing as I haven’t given him any reason to doubt my lowly origins.”  He gestures, grinning, at the state of their clothes, at the drained tankard of Dragon’s Breath still dangling from his fingers and at the goats chewing on his trousers.

Merlin shakes his head.  Lord Geoffrey of Monmouth has plenty of duties to occupy his time without wasting precious hours looking into Gwaine’s parentage, and even if the court historian were one day to grow curious, Merlin has been down to the Archives enough times to make such changes as he felt were appropriate.  A reference to Sir _Gavan_ , first son of Lord Gwalchmei of Orkney and Lothian, would hardly excite anyone’s attention.

“I’ve kept your secrets, Gwaine,” Merlin assures him, scanning the street for movement.  “I’ll ask that you keep mine as well.”

“Oh?"  Gwaine gives him a bemused look.  "And what secrets have you got, Merlin?”

Merlin’s fingers itch.  He makes fists in the dark, relaxing them one finger at a time.  “Tonight’s escapade, for one thing, if we make it back up to the castle without being spotted.”

Gwaine chuckles.  “What’s the matter?  Don’t want our lord to hear you’ve been down to the tavern again?”

“Not really, no.”

“Better leg it, then,” Gwaine suggests, and bursts through the door.  Merlin curses and tears after him, vaulting over the pen’s fencing and racing up the street.  Ahead of him, the stones of Camelot echo with Gwaine’s bellowed voice, a joyful drinking song belted out without a whiff of concern for the pursuit it is sure to draw:

 _When we’re at the tavern we_  
_Care not for what this world may be,_

 _We laugh, we drink, and drinking see,_  
_All creatures of god were made to be free!_

 

v.

“Lancelot!”

Lancelot bolts off Gaius’ bench as if he’d sat on an arrowhead.  “Merlin!  I - thought you’d be working.”

“I am.”  Merlin holds up a mostly empty bag of deliveries.  “I thought you’d be down at the training green.”

“I...was.  In fact, I ought to be getting back there now.”  He attempts to slide past Merlin.  “Excuse me.”

“Sorry,” Merlin counters, slipping deftly in front of the door and wrapping one hand firmly around the handle.  “You haven’t by any chance been waiting for Gaius, have you?”

“Gaius?  No.  Of course not.”

Merlin looks him up and down suspiciously.  “What’s that you’ve done to your arm?” he exclaims, pointing.

“Nothing!”

“Excuse _me_ ,” Merlin says, poking Lancelot very decidedly in the chest.  “Don’t you lie to me.  I know you too well.”

Lancelot grimaces in an embarrassed sort of way and shuffles about a bit, cape brushing the floor.  “Well.  Truth be told.  I’ve...come off worse in a bout with Sir Norric.”

Merlin blinks at him.  “Sorry?”  Sir Norric was hardly Lancelot’s equal in any sense of the word, on or off the training green.  “Impossible.”

“I...became distracted.  He landed a solid blow.  It was my own error.”

Merlin does not need to ask what - or who - had managed to capture Lancelot’s attention so thoroughly.  He chivvies Lancelot up the steps into his own room, fetching a spare wound kit from the cupboard.  “And I suppose a pillar of chivalry such as yourself congratulated him on his victory and thanked him for the chance to better your skills?”

“I may have done,” Lancelot admits, sitting down on Merlin's bed.  “Sir Percival and he had other words, though.”

Merlin sets Gaius’ medicine bag down on the mattress with a satisfied clunk.  "Good."  Sir Norric was half Percival's height - he would think twice about repeating such an opportunistic stunt, if the opportunity were to present itself again.

“I was meant to ride out tomorrow,” Lancelot sighs, probing the offending arm experimentally.  “Arthur won’t be pleased when he finds out I’ve been injured.”

“Less pleased when he finds out you’ve been bested by Sir Norric.”

Their eyes meet, Merlin’s lit by a spark of mischief; Lancelot’s creased in an obliging smile.

“Then again,” Lancelot muses, testing the arm’s severely limited range of motion carefully, “perhaps he does not need to know.”

Merlin gives Lancelot’s pitiful exercises a practiced once-over, then returns to rooting through Gaius’ bag.  “You can’t raise that arm over your head," he says.  "Arthur might not recognize a faerie if it flew up his nose, but he certainly won’t fail to notice that one of his best knights has lost the ability to wield a sword.”

“No, I don’t doubt it,” Lancelot agrees.  “But perhaps if the wound were to be treated.”

Merlin dangles a roll of bandage in front of Lancelot's nose.  “What do you think I’m doing, you ninny?”

Lancelot snags the bandage out of the air with his good hand and tosses it back into Merlin’s lap.  “Perhaps if the wound were to be treated...so as to heal a bit _faster_.”

Merlin pauses in his rummaging and gives Lancelot a conspiratorial look.  “I beg your pardon?”

“I thought you said Gaius wanted you to practice more with - ” he leans around to peer down the short staircase, checking the rooms beyond, “-  _alternative_ medicine.”

“He does,” Merlin says, expression suddenly muddled.  He follows Lancelot’s gaze out into the physician’s chambers.  The door to the hallway beyond is closed.

Lancelot watches him closely for a long moment.  An outside observer would think Merlin had forgotten Lancelot was there, so long and thin does the silence between them stretch.  

Lancelot is the first to stir.  “Forgive me, Merlin," he says finally, after an age.  "I spoke without thinking. I won't have you take such a risk on my behalf, not over something so trivial as - ”

“No,” Merlin says abruptly.  “You’re right, of course.  Gaius is right.  What if you were to be injured in the field?  It’s not like I tag along with you lot to carry Arthur’s bags, after all.”

Lancelot hesitates.  “I've made you uncomfortable.  My injury is nothing, truly.  I hardly feel it.”

But there is an eager spark to Merlin’s eyes now, a banked fire which Lancelot has scarcely seen in them before.  “Close that door, please,” Merlin asks.  He sweeps the contents of Gaius’ wound kit aside to make space on the bed, and, bending down, pops up a floorboard with his heel, withdrawing a very old book.

Lancelot closes the door as instructed, then turns the latch for good measure.  He turns to Merlin, who is sitting cross-legged on the bed with his nose buried in the book.  “What now?” he asks.

Merlin beckons him over.  “You can take your tunic off, for starters.  And sit here.”

Lancelot drags the shirt over his head with difficulty, accepting Merlin’s help in peeling it away from the offending arm.  Merlin tosses the bloody wad of fabric aside to join the other clothes strewn haphazardly across the wooden floor, the sight of which makes the corners of Lancelot’s mouth turn up.  Merlin sets Lancelot on a small stool next to the bed, kicking a pair of trousers out of the way as if to make a point.  “When you spend all your time cleaning up after Arthur, we’ll see how much time you have left for keeping your own room sorted.”

“Did I say anything?”

Merlin shushes him, sitting down on the bed opposite.  He takes Lancelot’s wrist and raises the injured arm, first laterally, then back to front, palm up and palm down, and in rotation, as far as the wound will allow.

“Is it, er...is it working?” Lancelot asks.  He winces as Merlin draws the arm across his chest to point at the other side of the room.

Merlin laughs aloud.  “I haven’t done anything yet!”  He moves down to Lancelot’s elbow, and then to his hand, manipulating each of the fingers in turn.  “Gaius says a medical practitioner must always perform a proper exam.”

“And what is your diagnosis, physician?”

Merlin looks up from Lancelot’s hand with such an obvious blur of censure and affection that Lancelot can’t help but smile.  “An incurable case of knightly foolishness."  He lays a weighted leather ball in Lancelot’s hand.  “Squeeze that, please.”

Lancelot does so.  “And do you have a treatment for this condition?”

Merlin plucks the ball from Lancelot’s hand and favors him with a playful glance.  “I might.”  He leans back, hand on his chin.  “This,” he says after a moment, pointing at the wound, “is not penetrating, but it’s in a bad spot for flexibility.”

“I'd noticed.”

“He got you right up across the armpit there.  Were you not wearing besagews?”

Lancelot shakes his head.  “No, I never do.  They’re too much in the way, Merlin; it’s just not practical.”

“No, I know, Arthur doesn’t like them either.”  Merlin’s brow is knitted in thought.  After another moment, he sits up straight, slapping both hands down upon his knees.  “Right, then,” he says, all business, fixing Lancelot with a stern glare.  “You mustn’t move.  Otherwise I might fix the wrong sinew at the wrong joint and then we’ll really be in trouble.”

It’s a mark of Lancelot’s loyalty that he doesn’t balk at this pronouncement.  “All right, then.”

Merlin leans forward.  When next he opens his mouth, his voice seems to travel to Lancelot’s ears from some distance.  “Don’t be afraid.”

The hair on the back of Lancelot’s neck stands up.

Merlin lays a hand in the center of Lancelot’s chest.  Directly under his cool palm, Lancelot’s heart thumps out a steady rhythm.

“Be still,” Merlin says, from a long way off.  From Caerleon, from the Ridge of Aesctir at least.  From beyond the Seas of Meredor.

It feels as if it is taking a very long time for Lancelot to put words together.  “What are you doing?” he finally asks.

Merlin’s eyes are closed.  “Getting the measure of things,” he murmurs at last.  “Of you.”   _Ka-thumbp. Ka-thumbp._

“Am I supposed to be feeling - ”

“Be still,” Merlin says a second time, and places his other hand over the open wound, blood, dirt and all.

A strange sense of unreality settles over the room.  At first, Lancelot thinks that it is just the sun coming out from behind a cloud, or that a veil has slipped from the casement, until he recalls that Merlin’s window has no covering, and that it had already been sunny before they had begun.  And then he does feel something - a tangible shift in the atmosphere, a new taste at the back of his mouth, as when, stranded on the water, the wind picks up; or, as when waiting for rain, the sky darkens - the air taking on the charged quality of a hot summer night before a first bolt of lightning strikes the bell tower.  Dust motes, formerly spinning in lazy circles behind Merlin’s bowed head, grind to an absolute halt, glittering in the sun.  Every stone sucks in a breath.  Every board bends, creaking under the unspeakable weight of anticipation.

 _"Þurhhæle,”_ says Merlin, his voice ringing and unfamiliar and strong.

 _Ka-thumbp._ Lancelot's heart contracts in a clench such as only the lady Guinevere has ever been able to inspire, a love-thud, sending incandescent warmth spooling out to the very tips of his fingers, to the very bottom of his toes, as if a master seamstress had threaded his veins with torchlight.   _Ka-thumbp_ , the molten cascade burbles up from heart-hand to healing hand, a fieriness worthy of the smithy’s forge pooling under broken skin, knitting mangled flesh anew, twisting sinew back into shape.  Merlin's admonition to be still is utterly unnecessary - Lancelot doesn’t think he could move even if he wanted to.  The muscles in his shoulder tighten and relax in turn, kneaded by invisible hands; his skin crawls bizarrely under Merlin’s palm, but instead of pain, there is only the charcoal glow of a stoked fire, kindled in his chest and fanned in furious flames all the way up his front, hot and clean and strangely reassuring, like a first glimpse of one's hearthfire at the end of a lengthy journey.  It _should_ hurt, Lancelot knows, he is certain of it; he’s had wounds aplenty in this long, hard year of knight’s work, all stitched and set and surgeried back to rights, but this is nothing like those torturous hours.  This is a smile from his lady, etched lovingly into and onto every inch of his skin.  This is miracle-craft.  Impossible, people would say.  Unbelievable.

Like magic.

He stares wide-eyed at Merlin, whose head is lowered, the very space around him seeming to ripple like the air above the courtyard flagstones on a sweltering August day.  “What does it feel like?” he whispers.

Merlin is absolutely still, eyes closed, warmth streaming from his fingers and into the living vessel in front of him.  “Like…”  Blood pulses up to Lancelot's shoulder, commanded there by two steady hands against his skin;  _thumbp, thumbp, thumbp._ “It's like swallowing sunlight," Merlin murmurs.  "Like a hot bath.  Like - starlings alighting from the north tower at evening bell.”  He pulls back slowly, unwillingly, detaching his palms from Lancelot’s skin, a cool wave chasing the final _ka-thumbp_ of Lancelot's heart.  “Like endless summer.”

The fire in Lancelot’s shoulder begins to dissipate, and, as the last breath of warmth vanishes from his skin, a veil flutters silently back into place.  The dust resumes its pinwheeling in the sun, the light of which seems dimmer, somehow, than a moment ago.  The boards snap back to their warped, wooden selves; the stones turn back to stone.  The walls seem to sigh, then sag.

Merlin opens his eyes.  Lancelot fancies he sees a glint of light fading there, but he might easily have confused this with the more general fading of his friend's mien - Merlin's face falls, slightly, and he gives himself a little shake, as if to rouse himself from some painfully happy dream; or as if magic were something that could cling to his skin, his hair, and his clothes, and be seen.  His gaze flickers instinctively to the door. 

Lancelot does not quite know what to say to him.  “Merlin...”

Merlin comes to himself immediately.  He pushes himself off the bed, gesturing to Lancelot’s shoulder, now fresh and pink and raw and warm where only moments ago it had been marred by an ugly gash.  “There,” Merlin says, patting the new skin.  “See?  Good as new.”  He ducks down to slide his book back under the floorboards.  “No one will ever know.”

Lancelot frowns in a troubled sort of way.  “Hmm,” is all he can say in return.

 

vi.

Arthur enters his chambers exactly as one would expect a man of royal lineage to open swinging doors: boldly, and with very little regard for the knuckles of whomsoever might be sweeping the threshold on the other side.

“Merlin!  Good, I’ve been looking for you.”

Merlin shakes out his scraped fingers with a grimace.  “Not very closely, I don’t think.”

Arthur ignores him, swinging the door closed with a jaunty flick of his wrist.  “Never mind the floors for now; I’ve a few errands for you today.”  He snags the broom out of Merlin’s hands and spins it in a casual ruck and thrust, as if the handle were a quarterstaff and his bedpost a skinny and very slow opponent.  “I need you to go down to the cordwainer and see about new boots for Sir Elyan; the ones he’s got are worn clean through; he might as well be wearing cheesecloth for shoes.  And when you’ve done that, Lancelot’s horse needs turning out; his groom’s abed with some malady or other; Gaius knows what - and then once you’ve finished with that, Gwaine and I both have tunics that need mending, and Sir Percival’s buckler ought to have been repaired by now - run down to the armorer and fetch it for him, and for god’s sake don’t let Manfred swindle any extra coin out of you this time; there’s no such thing as an ‘oversized rivets’ fee.  Oh - and take this - ” he swats the broom against a padded aketon hanging over the back of a chair, “to Sir Leon, and see that it’s been fitted properly.  He’ll be representing us in the tourney next week, and I want him outfitted better than he was at Nos Galan.  Last time he came back looking like they’d let the horses dance on top of him.”

Merlin presses his lips together in a way that means he’s weighing the risks and benefits of an uppity remark.  “And what of the floors, sire?” he says, opting for restrained politeness. 

Arthur raps the broom handle smartly against his bedframe, one-two-cut-reverse, smiling where Merlin can’t see him.  “Not to worry.  You can do that after you’ve finished the rest.”

Merlin’s indignant stare pelts Arthur’s back with a flurry of incredulous daggers.  “You do know I don’t actually belong to all six of you, yes?”

Arthur rolls his eyes.  Such vociferous denials of serfdom, peppered with equally vehement proclamations of ‘Ealdor this’ and ‘Ealdor that,’ have been repeated often enough in these chambers that by now even the curtains should be able to repeat Merlin’s words with pinpoint accuracy.  Arthur, completing a spin, dumps the broom onto his bed and begins to unclasp his padded doublet.  “You don’t _belong_ to a single one of us, Merlin, as you are so very fond of reminding me; however - ”

Merlin opens his mouth to interject, but Arthur tosses the doublet into his face before Merlin can relate yet another thrilling anecdote in defense of Ealdor’s indisputably free status, one no doubt involving an old man, an even older cow and, possibly, if the tale were to be really very exciting, an ancient chicken or two.

Arthur ambles over to his desk.  “ _However_ ,” he resumes, “you do work for me, and in such a capacity as requires you to do...hm, how shall I put this? - oh, yes: everything I ask.  Therefore, if I should ask that you water Sir Lancelot’s horse, and fetch Sir Percival’s arms, and mend Sir Gwaine’s tunic, and replace Sir Elyan’s boots…”  He raises his eyebrows expectantly.

Merlin yanks the doublet off his head. He looks sorely tempted to drop it on the as-yet-unswept floor.  “Right.”

Arthur allows Merlin exactly three seconds of glaring, for his health.  Then he shoos him out the door, waving him off like a wayward goose.  “On your way, then!”

Merlin takes his time about it, picking up the aketon and folding it over his arm.  “Maybe I ought to go and work for Sir Leon,” he muses.  “Gwen says servants in his household get half-Sunday’s off.”

“You can’t go and work for Sir Leon, Merlin.”

Merlin wrinkles his nose.  “Why not?  I’m a freeman.  I can do what I like.”

“You can’t go and work for Sir Leon because Sir Leon’s household would chew you to bits and spit you out before you had the chance to even button your coat; his family’s seneschal would never tolerate the sort of nonsense you get up to in here and certainly would never let this - ” he gestures at his chambers - “pass for tidiness.”

“I quite like Sir Leon,” Merlin says, undeterred.

“Sir Leon is one thing; his mother is entirely another; if you’re going to leave my service, you ought to at least go and work for Gwaine - he’s far less likely to string you up by the ankles for sneaking down to the tavern at every possible opportunity.”  Arthur shakes his head over a sheaf of paperwork.  “He’d probably meet you there,” he mutters.

Merlin smiles.  “Gwaine would never have me, not as a servant.”

“Elyan, then.”

“Elyan?  Elyan still feels he is beyond his station when the palace staff come to light his fires.”

“Lancelot?”

“Would never take me from you.”

“Percival, then.”

“Percival is so...”

“What?”

Merlin thinks for a moment.  “Big.”

“Merlin.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Out.”

Merlin dips into a very slight bow, one that manages to be just as pleasantly baiting as the first he’d ever made, a full four years ago in the middle of a crowded street, muddy boots and squawking chickens and all.  “Yes, _my lord_.”  He pauses at the door.  “You’re lucky I like them, you know.”

“You’re lucky they like you,” Arthur corrects him.  Then, in an undertone, “for whatever reason.”

Merlin inclines his head graciously.  “My lord, it is because they have _taste_.”

Arthur has no outerwear left to throw in Merlin’s direction, but a wadded up roll of parchment does just as well.

   

 


End file.
